inescapability
by Malik Blishtar
Summary: This is a life of mediocrity and dullness that comes in bursts. Anger, too, and something less defined. Desire and tranquility, somehow content, somehow restless. It tries to crawl up his throat, sometimes. Shizuo is very good at keeping it in.


Shizuo used to like poetry. Not enough to memorize it, or even absorb the hidden meaning.

He hadn't liked the kind that was – well, poetic; with long, abstract words, and a sense of unease creeping into his chest with every consequent line. His mother had liked all kinds of poetry. She read him the old kind a few times, with metaphors and allusions and he hadn't liked those at all.

_This one, then? _his mother had said when he'd huffed in all his twelve-year old glory at a poem about love. She'd closed the book, and he had wondered for a moment why she favored poetry about impossible things, and she had opened a notebook and out tumbled words of desire, destruction, of fear and a guilt that could only have come from shame.

He had liked poetry about all these destructive things, about behavior that leads to downfall. He had liked them because this kind of poetry, he understood.

Those poems were his mother's favorites, too. There was something macabre about telling them to her oldest son; but there had also been an odd pride at the way he cocked his head, mesmerized. Shizuo had asked for more poems of the type, and she had kindly told him to do his homework instead.

Maybe she hadn't been the best mother, but the way Shizuo seemed to thrum with a new purpose after that night – it was enough to kill that doubt.

* * *

Ikebukuro is a place that is always alive with noise and movement. Crowds every which way, and it's hard to imagine being lonely in a place like this. Shizuo doesn't, mostly, and tries not to over-think it when he does.

Tom told him to take the day off, so he did, more for the sake of appeasing his employer and friend rather than for his own benefit. Taking the day off means strolling down streets his footprints must be worn into by now; it means pizza or noodles in front of a shitty TV show or two, and it means lukewarm water in the shower past midnight.

It means this: the glare of the sun reflecting on his sunglasses, turning the world into a blur that he has to squint against. The wall of the alley is hard against his back.

He takes a drag of his cigarette, two. When he's finished, he lights another.

This is a life of mediocrity and dullness that comes in bursts. Anger, too, and something less defined. Desire and tranquility, somehow content, somehow restless.

It tries to crawl up his throat, sometimes. Shizuo is very good at keeping it in.

* * *

You can fake interest, but passion is difficult to fabricate. Shizuo knows how to nod along to endless conversations about things he really doesn't care about. He knows when to interject with a question or his opinion, and he has adapted a casual indifference to his tone that fools most people into thinking _yes, he cares_.

He doesn't know much about passion.

The closest thing is the heat in his blood when _Shizu-chan _rings out in a mocking tone; when the sun is beat by the smirk Izaya adapts, sharp and merciless and amused.

This is what he knows about passion: it renders him not immobile, but purposeful. It sings in the tension of his muscle, the grit of his teeth as he grinds his jaw and clamps it shut lest he blurts _why don't you come closer and stop running for once and let me-_

He doesn't know anything about passion. He leaves the thought unfinished.

* * *

He breaks something other than his body when he's eleven. He gets mad, and Kasuka isn't there to anchor him. He smashes a mirror, not because he can't stand his expression or the way anger is always painted in the curl of his mouth, ugly and childish. He feels the inhumanity of his own strength vibrate within his joints, in bones that should be stronger but they break, they always break.

He is tired of this tug-of-war between feeling strong and then weak; when the anger diminishes, he is left with only himself and the truth that is too much for him to acknowledge until years later.

His mother denies it.

_Sweetheart, you're not a monster. You're not a bad person. You're different, Shizuo. It's not a bad thing unless you let it be._

And here, Shizuo lets her down for the last time. He lets it be bad.

* * *

He often wonders about self-control. For all that Izaya taunts him for his perceived lack of it, the way he gives into brute, unnatural strength, Shizuo is not out of control.

He curls his fingers on the railing. It hardly even creaks under his grip.

It would have been torn in half, had he done this when he was twelve. Still angry, confused, all the things normal kids didn't feel unless their parents scolded them or refused to buy them a new toy. His mom had never been angry at him. Shizuo covered that on his own.

* * *

Shizuo says a lot he doesn't mean. _I hate this place, _for one, because Ikebukuro is the only place that has tolerated his rampages of destruction for an extended time. _I wish I was normal, _too, but that less often – if he could have the chance to always have been normal, he'd take it. But to have his strength taken away now, with the life he lives; he'd be dead within the hour.

He doesn't lie, precisely. Just omits the cold, hard facts, denies the way he is like a caged animal despite the vastness of the city. How are people expected to treat him like a human when for all intents and purposes, his body operates like a beast's?

Izaya is fond of pointing it out. Not without maliciousness, of course, but sometimes with an odd affection, as if this part of Shizuo, the one that lashes out and snarls and destroys everything – as if this part of Shizuo belongs to him.

The thought comes to Shizuo, unbidden. It's a fanciful notion. Shizuo hasn't read poetry in a long time, but it's as if the words come clawing to the surface of his mind, demanding to be heard. He reminds himself of this: he is a pretender, and he is wired differently. What curls hot in his blood is a traitorous impulse, purely physical.

He says a lot he doesn't mean, but he thinks it, too. _I don't know what I want, _and then he stops thinking.

* * *

Celty comes the closest to asking outright. He's at her and Shinra's apartment, noon, and it's sunny outside. Too bright for the gravity of the situation, but Shizuo knows he blows things out of proportion.

She taps on her PDA. _There's something wrong?_

"There's a lot wrong," Shizuo says, unusually weary. He is tired of this. The games, the rush of blood to his face that has nothing to do with being cold. He is tired of wanting and wanting and refusing to admit it.

Maybe it's easier to give it a name.

_Do you want to tell me?_

Celty is clever. Not _can you tell me? _or _please tell me what's wrong. _She leaves it up to him.

He knows more than enough about fear to let it make up for his lack of knowledge about other things. "Is 'I'm confused' enough to go by?" _No, _she taps out, and Shizuo looks out across the city. There's this endless want he doesn't understand, taking up space in his chest but leaving him empty all the same. Maybe some of those poems did stick, after all.

"I can't figure out what I want. Why I want it," he admits, and maybe it's not so horrible now that he's said it out loud; just a simple fact. He wants. He doesn't know why or what, not entirely. Maybe it's okay to feel like that. He can't be the only one.

It doesn't hurt anymore. He's said it, and as frightening as it is, a feeling of relief blankets the anxious fear. If he can put it into words, it can't be that bad. Celty doesn't reply for a minute, and the rhythm of her tapping is slow, peaceful, when she finally starts to write.

_It's alright not to know what you want. Nobody really does, Shizuo. I think that whatever you want, you deserve it._

He smiles, brief and soft, unlike the sharp grins that have a tendency to turn maniacal in a fight. "Thanks." His voice comes out gruff.

_I want you to be happy, _she types next, and he can forgive the non-sequitur for the happiness that finally comes, unrestrained.

* * *

The problem with being unfamiliar with desire is that when you feel it, you have a tendency to let it fester. What starts as curiosity and intrigue can snowball into desire and then evolve into obsession, lightning-fast and terrifying. Shizuo has always been afraid. He just never expected to be afraid of this.

Izaya fits in, despite the fur-trimmed jacket in the sweltering heat. He doesn't look uncomfortable, but the material must be sticking to his skin.

"Shizu-chan," he lilts, teasingly pleasant. "I wasn't sure I'd be seeing you today. Bit hot to go out foraging, isn't it?"

Shizuo doesn't take offense at the subtle insult. He is a beast, and he knows it. There is no harm in admitting it; animals are not ruled by instinct alone. And for all his less humane traits, there is a longing so profound it's unlikely to be found in any other person in Ikebukuro.

It's too violent for a love story. Too messy for a poem, and this is not something that can be packed into neat lines and scrawled down into an article. This is something not necessarily nameless, but something that needs to grow. Shizuo isn't good at first steps, but he takes them anyway.

He supposes this is where he's meant to make a grand confession, but the feeling is lesser, now. Not weaker – he's just learned to tuck it away, let it curl into itself when he's afraid it will carve itself into his very bones.

He blames the relentless, nauseating build-up for why it feels so anticlimactic. "Shut up," he says, and comes closer to Izaya than he's ever been.

He doesn't kiss him. His fingers curl in the parka, and he breathes heavily, and he is sure his heart isn't meant to be racing the way it is when all he's done is taken even, measured steps.

"Come home with me," he says.

* * *

Izaya doesn't smoke, but he opens the window anyway. The breeze is cold, calming. Shizuo blinks, half-asleep. There is a bright blotch of red on his shoulder, another covered by the sheets. "What brought this on?" Izaya asks, and for all that Shizuo thought he was ready to answer, he finds himself presenting Izaya with empty hands.

"It's just...you know," Shizuo shrugs, fixing his gaze to the wall washed in fading light.

"No," Izaya says mildly. "I don't think I know at all."

It doesn't matter. They have time, as much as they decide they want. Shizuo will find the words in his own time.

"Come back to bed," he requests. There's a spot on the mattress that isn't meant for Izaya, but he thinks it can be reshaped.

Shizuo shifts to lie on his side.

This is what it all adds up to: fragments of his scent on Izaya's skin, his shampoo shared by them both. Two bodies like jagged pieces of a puzzle, but they have never played by the rules.

Izaya presses up against his back. It doesn't feel quite like home, or like belonging, not even like love. It feels like what it is: teeth against the back of his neck, fingers on a hipbone smudged with bruises. It feels like violence and teasing, like the flicker of desire deepening with every kiss that had been brushed along his vertebrae.

It feels like a decision. Shizuo turns his head back towards Izaya, but he is already asleep.

It feels like one of the best decisions he has ever made.


End file.
